“Your Majesty, when last the pains began, Elizabeth was here.”

Mary turned her head from him and fixed Elizabeth with a stare.

“You were! You were! And they did stop. You, who do hate my babe. You hope he’ll die—”

“Mary—” Elizabeth whispered.

“Witch! ” Mary spat the word at her. “That’s what you are —a witch. And so you should be punished. You have practiced witchcraft against me and my babe… God! if I thought it was you, I’d tear the heart out of your flesh myself—”

“Mary,” Elizabeth said, clear and steadily, “be not so violent—for the babe's sweet sake. …”

Mary sank deeper into her chair, sagging suddenly.

“My babe!” she echoed in a mutter. “Yes, yes, that’s true. My babe!

“Bishop, be gone — and get her from this place.”

“To where, Your Majesty?” Gardiner asked.

“Anywhere — anywhere—so you do make a prison of it and keep her watched.”

She half rose, stumbled, pressed a hand to her side.

“Help me to my room.”

“I’ll call your women,” Gardiner said quickly.

“No!” Mary lifted her voice. “No women! No one—no one — above all, no women! They whisper—” She was moving slowly, waveringly, to the door, and sobbing in anguish as she went. “Then if they do not … I can hear them … smile! Oh God, why do the pains not start? Why do the pains not start? ”

Gardiner advanced, drew her arm through his, and led her away. Her terrible sobs could be heard in the gallery, ebbing as they went.

Elizabeth crumpled, falling with her face against the cushions of Mary’s chair.

“Mary …” She spoke muffled by the velvet, her hands gripping the carved arms. “Mary … Oh God, deliver her … and me … and me…

Though Mary herself at last came to recognize the truth of her own self-deception—that there was to be no child—the health of her heart and of her mind was broken. Still, she lived on, in hopes of Philip’s return. When he did come, her joy was momentarily untempered by the fact that he had

come at Charles’s command—to ask for ships, men and arms for Spain’s war with France. He needed only to ask to be given them—despite the murmurings of the people, despite the advice of her own Council, Mary could deny him nothing.

She might not have been so quick to concede to his wishes had she known that as soon as he had what he came for he would leave England. This time, she had seen him for the last time. Did she have some premonition? Was this the reason she followed him to the very shores of Dover, and stood weeping as his ship put out?

From that moment on, there was no rest for her. The ill-fated English intervention in this war of Charles’s cost them Calais, and brought upon Queen Mary’s head the eternal blame for that loss. Some said she went completely mad then. She would walk ceaselessly up and down. She would speak when no one was with her. She would not answer those who spoke to her. She would stop suddenly and sit down upon the door, and gaze into God only knows what scene before her.

And those around her grew to fear her slightest move. She seemed to find her only relief in the persecutions that earned her the ill-fated name “Bloody Mary.” … What she had hoped to do for her beloved church she defeated in her very persecutions, making martyrs out of those she hoped to disgrace.

Her health was failing, and England again watched — and waited — and looked to the one remaining Tudor. Yet watching and waiting were not enough. Fear of the dying Queen was everywhere. No one knew which way she would leap in her broken-hearted revenge against a fate that had dealt so harshly with her.

Up and down the country, and outside of it, there were those who would have risked anything to assure themselves of Elizabeth. Plots—hidden, secret, unknown—were hatched in darkness, by those too eager, or too afraid to wait.

But Elizabeth would have none of them. No word of treason was allowed to be spoken in her presence. She too feared, but above all she feared for the loss of truth—of lawful, true succession. And so she kept to herself, alone, watched, guarded by the Queen’s men, playing always the game that she had come to know so well—the fine diplomatist’s game of doing nothing, of waiting for the next move from the enemy.

She was at Hatfield, and with her those she had come to love the best of all—her own beloved Ashley, her own dear Parry, standing between her and the guards the Queen had set about her. With her too, was Rob—Robert Dudley—free at long last from the Tower, but not unwatched for all that.

It was a cold day in November. That the Queen was ill was common knowledge. But she had been ill before. And no word that came from London could be believed by those who kept watch here. Elizabeth prayed only for the moment that she might keep to Hatfield, and not be summoned back to the side of a mad Queen who hated her. Yet the need to know what was happening there was a torment she did not know if she could bear.

“I live like a performing bear on a chain,” Elizabeth said with a dry bitterness. “Led from place to place, back and forth — and jerked by the chain wherever it be.”

“God’s precious soul!” Ashley remonstrated. “What’s amiss with being here? The Court’s no merry place these days, and not much safer than the Tower! We’re surer of our necks here than in town, that I do know! ”

“I wonder,” Elizabeth said.

In another room, Parry was giving certain instructions to the young lad, Abel Cousins, who was now of Elizabeth’s household.

“… See that you go unobserved. The road from here to London is hot with the Queen’s men. We cannot have you stopped and questioned, but we must know if the Queen is truly ill.”

“You can trust me, sir. I know the back lanes,” Abel answered.

“We had one once who knew them well enough to play fox with the Queen’s whole army,” Parry said. “Would God he were here now.”

“Trust me, sir, as you’d trust him,” the boy urged.

Parry sighed heavily.

“Well, go and get us the truth of how the Queen does. Now go, and quickly.”

Parry waited until Abel was to be heard clattering downstairs before he turned to Robert Dudley, who sat in the window watching the scene with his usual air of detached indifference, and with intentness deep in his fine, dark eyes.

“I would know why we hear nothing of Verney.”

“If I ride to London myself, now, I can be back tonight,” Dudley suggested.

“And have Bess tear the house about our ears at finding you

gone? No, for God’s sake stay here. I cannot face another scene with her and no man here to help me out. Where is she now?”

“Above, in her chamber.”

“You should be with her,” Parry told him reproachfully. As the good cofferer aged, the younger people about him were more and more, in his eyes, the children he had known, regardless of their rank and standing.

“She sent a plate at my head when I got up from dinner,” Dudley observed dryly.

“Did she eat dinner?” Parry’s anxiety was for Elizabeth, not for Dudley’s handsome head.

“Not a mouthful.”

“She will fall ill again,” Parry prophesied with gloomy certainty. “Where is Ashley?”

“Watching her, from a window.”

“Is there nothing more we can do here?” Parry quavered. “This waiting goes hard with more than Elizabeth.”

“All’s done that can be. All we need now is Carew and his ship. ’Tis ready, that we know.”

“Aye, but where? Where?” Parry inquired breaking into an agitated shuffle from window to door.

“Sit down, Thomas,” Dudley bade him. “We cannot walk to France. Spare your legs.”

“I would we had Elizabeth there now. I’ll not sleep again till we have the seas between her and Mary.”

“It will be done,” Dudley soothed him with unusual patience. “Ashley has some small things put together in a bundle

and hidden. Elizabeth will not know of it till we have her aboard and weigh anchor.”

“If she suspects that we intend to spirit her to France out of harm’s way, God help us, we shall need it,” Parry said.

“If it comes to that, I’ll put a gag in her mouth myself, and tie her up and carry her.” Dudley spoke lightly, keeping his temper, keeping his head, as the old man’s anxiety rose higher.

Parry rubbed the back of his head, standing his thinning hair on end.

“I would William Cecil were here. She has listened to him.”

“No one must know of it, Thomas. I know not who’s to be trusted.”

“You can set those words to a tune and sing a song of them,” Parry returned with a bitterness that was not usual with him. “I know not, at times, whether I trust my own face in a mirror.”

“If this is how we feel, what must it be with her?” Dudley mused, his lightness changed in a twinkling and the truth of his heart in his tone.

Parry’s eyes softened.

“I’ll take her tempers and her moods and love her with ’em.

… What these past years have been for her would unseat the reason of a saint. And saint, Bess is not …” he finished with feeling.

Dudley laughed.

“No, she’s a woman. Were there more like her, I’d say they were made of stronger stuff than saints.”

“Ashley!” Parry exclaimed as Ashley came in. “How is it with her?”

“Still walking up and down upstairs. She has not slept nor eaten. I cannot reason with her more. Lord Robert, you are the only one can talk with her.”

“But is he man enough to try?” Parry suggested with a faint chuckle. “Go to it, Robert. There are no plates above stairs…”

But Elizabeth herself was suddenly in the room. She came in like a sleepwalker, looking straight before her and at none of them, and there was silence as she went to a chair and seated herself. At last Elizabeth broke the silence.